Month 1 - The Proposal

I recently performed my proposal presentation for LA3DG.

The major feedback I received is:

• Concern towards the complexity of the project.

• The importance of qualitative validation alongside quantitative findings.

• The need for a refined hypothesis.

I too am concerned about the complexity of the project. I am fortunate in that I am continuing from previous work in the degree, so the automated image collection, filtering, and inpainting portions are essentially completed. There is also a working UI that only needs some adjustments to ease the output folder selection process. These UI implementations have been previously performed in another class when I created a basic data visualization software. Although, the scope of the work is huge, I do feel ready.

I did not originally recognize areas in which 3rd party validation would be beneficial - and required - but I appreciated the feedback. I initially thought my results would require qualitative feed back; but upon further research, I found that the team responsible for previous NeRF research utilized quantitative measures to grade their 3D models. After, studying PSNR, SSIM, and LPIPS, I completely dropped the idea of utilizing qualitative findings at all. However, it is unwise for me to determine if images contain the same object because there is the perceivable risk of data manipulation - a highly unethical practice that I do not want to be associated with.

Lastly, I included in my hypothesis various goals that were deemed unnecessary. I originally included these goals to force myself to monitor the various AI modules incorporated into LA3DG. However, they did not directly relate to the goals of LA3DG and caused committee members to recommend a refinement of my hypothesis. Luckily, I was able to determine which portions of the hypothesis to exclude on the spot and adequately supported the rest. I believe this led to the overall acceptance of my proposal and I am thankful to the committee for their positive response.